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APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY SUMMITS


Von David Cooperrider und Diana Whitney


Continuous and unpredictable change marks the environment in which most organizations operate today. Organizations that have sustained success over long periods of time recognize change as a process not an event. Sustainable organizations recognize change as the ongoing process of organizational life itself.

As leaders, managers, and change agents, we must focus the attention of our organizations on expanding their capacity for positive change. Among the factors that enhance organizational capacity for change are: large-group forums with full-voice participation among all stakeholders; attention to the artistic creative, and spiritual dimensions of work life; and a sense of influence optimism the belief that our decisions and actions today do contribute to a better life for generations to come. The appreciative inquiry (AI) summit is a vehicle that facilitates this type of group interaction.

Appreciative inquiry is an organization development philosophy and methodology that can enhance the organization's capacity for ongoing adaptability. Appreciative inquiry focuses on an organization's capacity for positive change through inquiry into its positive change core-the body of stories, knowledge, and wisdom, often undiscussed, that best describes the organization's life-giving forces and the organization when it has been and is at its best. Appreciative inquiry fosters high involvement and cooperation among organization members and stakeholders. It changes the internal dialogue of the organization from problem-oriented, deficit discourse to possibility-oriented, appreciative discourse. In the words of Tom White, president of CTE Telephone Operations:

Appreciative Inquiry can get you much better results than seeking out and solving problems. That's an interesting concept for me, and I imagine for most of you-because telephone companies are among the best problem solvers in the world. We troubleshoot everything. We concentrate enormous resources on correcting problems that have relatively minor impact on our overall service performance ... when used continually and over a long period of time, this approach can lead to a negative culture. If you combine a negative culture with all the challenges we face today, it could be easy to convince ourselves that we have too many problems to overcome-to slip into a paralyzing sense of hopelessness. And yet if we flip the coin, we have so much to be excited about. We are in the most dynamic, and the most influential, business of our times. We ought to be excited, motivated, and energized. We can be if we just turn ourselves around and start looking at our jobs-and ourselves-differently; if we kill negative self-talk and celebrate our successes. lf we dissect what we do right and apply the lessons to what we do wrong, we can solve our problems and reenergize the organization at the same time. In the long run, what is likely to be more useful: Demoralizing a successful workforce by concentrating on their failures or helping them over their last few hurdles by building a bridge with their successes.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating mindless happy talk. Appreciative inquiry is a complex science designed to make things better. We can't ignore problems-we just need to approach them from the other side.

Among the most exciting applications of appreciative inquiry is the appreciative inquiry summit. An Al summit differs from other large-scale meeting processes in that the process is fully affirmative. It focuses on discovering and developing the organization's positive change core and converting it into strategic business processes such as marketing, customer service, human resources development, and new-product development. It launches the whole organization into new directions.

Participation at an Al summit is, by design, diverse and inclusive of all the organization's stakeholders-employees, customers, vendors, and community members. It is generally a four-day meeting and can involve anywhere from 50 to 2,000 or more participants. Ideally all members of an organization and a selection of outside stakeholders attend the summit. In Brazil, a company of 500 was closed for four days while all employees participated with approximately 150 customers, vendors, and community members in an AI strategic planning summit. In another instance, where 2,500 employees were involved in the inquiry through the mass mobilization of appreciative interviews, 500 employees, leaders, and outside stakeholders attended the organization's AI summit. In one unique case of the creation of an entirely new global organization, 3 global summits and 10 regional summits of 100 to 250 people each have served to draft a preamble, a purpose statement, a set of organization principles, a charter, and a plan for the global evolution and work of the newly emerging organization.

Incredible work has been accomplished by large groups of people participating in AI summits. The AI summit builds and renews relationships across the organization and among employees, customers, and vendors. It creates confidence and commitment in the organization by liberating the ideas and opinions of all participants. It is a high-participation process that makes a positive difference in terms of both business results and the elevation of the human spirit.

Diana WhÌtney and David L. Cooperrider